Gonna Miss Him

        I  have noticed without amazement, but with great  sadness, those partisans who are gleefully saying  "bye, bye" to the President. Accompanying this is an underlying sentiment of a sort of "good riddance" nature, which seems based on some belief that  Barack Obama has been a "bad" President. History will prove these morons wrong, as it proved their parents and grandparents wrong about Harry S. Truman.

       I have heard probably just about all the possible reasons for the shade which has been constantly thrown at Mr. Obama by the haters over the last 8  years. It ranges from the incredibly preposterous "He has big ears and I don't like that,"  to the more mundane, "He wants to give our tax dollars and other free stuff to those who don't deserve them." In between we have the  "too many executive orders", "too many vacations," "Too much money spent on the family," "Disregard for the Constitution," and finally, and most egregiously, "Obamacare is socialized medicine."

        It is fairly easy to explain these attitudes if we consider that the bulk of these people  get their "news" solely from Faux News. The O'Reilly/Hannity  axis of misinformation and outright lies has done yeoman service to their mindless drone viewers by removing all need for critical evaluation of fact,  replacing that process with their predigested bile, rather like a vulture feeds its young by puking into their gaping maws. It might be added that, like the young vulture, the Faux viewers aren't particularly finicky and even less discriminatory about what they ingest.

        Start with the fact that O'Reilly, who, fortunately  has a fine  ghost writer  in Martin Dugard, continues to refer to himself as a History teacher. In truth, he, an English teacher,  only taught one semester out of field in that discipline (high school history) before deciding the job was too hard. Of course the Faux historian's name looms large  on the book covers, and Dugard's is just sort of lurking in the shadow of the great one's imprimatur.  Start with a phony, give him an op-ed screed but call it "news" and there's small wonder there are so many ill informed. lickspittle, viewers who fawn at his TV image and purchase his books,

        So, rejecting the "ears" complain as simply childish, what else do we have? :

        "Tax dollars and free stuff to the undeserving."  Start by defining "undeserving" as "Those who aren't as white or fortunate as we are."  Continue by claiming that President Obama has in some way personally changed welfare legislation to add "those kind of people" to welfare rolls, then add the phrase "Obama Phone" for good measure. In fact, the sole interface of Barack Obama  and welfare rolls has been to make one modification to the 1996 "workfare" reform bill. That came at the specific request of several governors, among them the very Republican governor of Utah (whose own state Senator, Orrin Hatch professed outrage over the action!). Contrary to right wing babble, The President's executive order simply gave state governors what they asked him for - more flexibility in how they, at the state level administer the work requirements for the 1996 welfare reform act. Period. Oh, and that Obama Phone thingy? Never happened. George W. Bush signed the law in mid 2008, and 
it was a build on legislation signed by Reagan!

        "Too many Executive Orders" and "Too many Vacations" with the implication that Obama has racked up  record numbers in each category.  They sort of go together for one simple reason - both are blatant lies.  As to Executive orders - one has to go all the way back to 1889 - and Grover Cleveland's second administration to find a President who issued  fewer per year in office than Barack Obama has in almost twice the amount of time. Let me repeat that: No modern President has issued fewer executive orders per year in office than Obama! As to vacations, President Obama has taken less than 1/3of  the number of days of  vacation that his immediate predecessor or Reagan had taken at the same point in his second term.

        "Too much of our money spent on (vacations, the family, etc)"   It's true that the Federal government spends a lot on transportation, security and other issues for a President and his family. The problem here is that, while hard right media scream about the (roughly) $70 million spent in around 7 years of the Obama administration to date, they are strangely silent about the facts related to the Bush administration's spending and mislabeling of "expenditures."  When the Obamas  "vacation" at Martha's Vineyard, or Hawaii, some  media (guess which ones) report it as if the POTUS was off the clock. It is called "vacation" even though there is really no such concept for a seated president. By contrast, the $20 million spent by the Bushes just in flying  to their Crawford, Texas ranch were mysteriously called "Working trips." 

       The Obamas' overseas trips are  also criticized even though they are almost always to perform duties as head of state.  During Bush’s second term alone, Laura Bush made five “goodwill” trips to Africa. President Bush made the trip twice during his presidency. None of these was expensed as vacation, but collectively they dwarf the cost of the Obama's Africa trip (he actually went, unlike George W. who usually didn't). While the snipers of the right bitch about a ski trip to Aspen for the FLOTUS and her girls, and cavil that it cost an "outrageous" $84,000, the Bushes took 77 flights round trip to Crawford at    $226,07 per trip! Where's the outrage? And oh, yeah, an afterthought while editing  - if Trump maintains a residence in NYC for his wife and son, the bills will eclipse the combined Bush and Obama totals in less than two years! 

        "Violating the Constitution" - Most of these complaints were from those who believed the  Obama Administration was violating the POTUS constitutional duty to enforce laws (more specifically, one law) passed by Congress. And to that extent in that case, they are correct. What was less well publicized is that he had precedent from his predecessors.  While some critics claim that President Obama’s refusal to defend the ill conceived and mean spirited "Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was an unwarranted extension of executive power, the Obama administration is far from the first to refuse to defend a law for constitutional reasons. In fact, there are a number of  historical precedents  for the executive branch to take such action.

        More recently, over the last 60 years, both Republican and Democratic Presidents have refused to defend various laws that they believed to be unconstitutional. Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Truman all refused to defend separate-but-equal laws in schools and hospitals. The Clinton administration did not defend a federal law requiring HIV-positive military personnel to be dismissed from duty. And interestingly enough, even  George H.W. Bush did not defend a case regarding affirmative action at broadcast news stations, based on the recommendation made by his Acting Solicitor General who was none other than current Chief Justice John Roberts!

           Additionally, and even more interesting in light of the USSC overturning  DOMA, history shows us that an administration’s refusal to defend a law does not necessarily reflect the outcome of a particular Supreme Court ruling. President Ford refused to defend a campaign finance law that was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court. President Reagan did not defend an independent counsel law that later won by an overwhelming 7-1 margin in the Supreme Court!  Even the 1990 affirmative action law, deemed unconstitutional by then-Solicitor General John Roberts, was eventually upheld by a slim 5-4 margin.

        The interesting (to me) footnote is that many of the people of  North Carolina, and Tennessee,  those bastions of redneck Christian conservatism, probably have forgotten that it was another President, Andrew Jackson, who refused to enforce a law which HAD been decided by the USSC, and forcibly moved Indians off tribal  lands so that their white ancestors could claim them. Again, where's the outrage?  Of course, Obama was right, and DOMA was overturned.

        "The Affordable care Act ("Obamacare") is socialized medicine."  No it's not. Period. Socialized medicine as most less informed folks visualize it is the UK model in which everyone is insured by the government and every doctor in the National Health Service is paid by the government. Know what's closer to "socialized medicine? - Medicare. What? Heresy, you say! Nay nay, my friend, you pay into Medicare while you work and even while you draw Social Security (another "Socialism" style program, by the way) and the doctor or facility is , at least partially, compensated  by the government. "But Mike! I paid into Medicare."  Yep, just like folks in the UK pay into the NHS via taxes. Of course their system is more efficient as there is a single payer.

         Not to go too far afield here, but wait times for appointments in specialties like cardiology, derm, and others,  are now shorter in the UK than most big American cities!  Likewise, if you are Hep C positive, the new miracle drug, Harvoni -  (developed with a government grant, at Emory University) will cost you and/or your insurance company $94,000 for the standard 12 week round of treatment. In the UK, the identical therapy is about $12,500. Damn that socialized medicine! I know, but you don't get to choose your doctor ! Guess what, Sparky? Neither do the 92.3 million Americans in HMOs.

        Of course the ACA is none of that. It is a simple system that says "rather than having all of us pay for uninsured persons when they go to the ER in bad shape and usually cost far more to treat, let's require them to take some, if not all, of the responsibility for getting PRIVATE medical insurance." It is practically a gift to the health insurance business, who, by recent count have gained about 16 million clients. Is that perfect? Of course it isn't, but then one must remember that it was also fought tooth and nail and extensively modified and gutted by an obstructionist Congress.  

        As a general afterthought the hater frequently   throw in some vague "leadership/foreign policy" generality with which to ice the shit cake they're about to hurl. What these naifs don't understand is that this President has had to deal with  an economic and  geopolitical situation of a nature which no other Chief Executive  has ever faced and add to that the fact that the issue with which he has been most frequently flogged - ISIS - is the creation of the critically flawed foreign policy of his predecessor, whose party now delights in blaming it on Obama. This monumental leap of illogic makes my head hurt.        

       

        So these then are just some of the things cited by the Obama haters who are too gutless, spineless and two faced to say what's  really on their minds: they are bigots , for whom a Black President could never be satisfactory. That any sane, rational comparison between Bush 43 and Obama could be favorable to Bush is almost beyond comprehension. That that comparison extended to Trump could be different is even more ludicrous and the buffoon isn't even in office yet. Rarely has any American politician demonstrated the grace under fire of  President Obama and, by extension, his family.

        I have never, in 60 years of political awareness seen the  totally unwarranted vile language and characterizations which have been leveled against this man and his family aimed at any President.  

       But then, I was too young to really understand the total evil that was Joseph McCarthy, so I guess I'll have to settle for Ann Coulter or Ted Cruz.